Populations of the Most Populous Nations. I found the population figures in Wikipedia’s “World population” for the most populous countries very interesting.

China: 1,364,970,000

India: 1,245,280,000

United States: 318,201,000

Indonesia: 247,008,052

Brazil: 201,032,714

Pakistan: 186,709,000

Nigeria: 173,615,000

Bangladesh: 152,518,015

Russia: 143,657,134

Japan: 127,180,000

I hadn’t realized that the US was the third most populous nation. All of Europe, including 110,000,000 in the European part of Russia, is only listed at 742,000,000. The reason it makes sense to focus on population figures is that catch-up economic growth up to the cutting-edge level of income per capita is much easier than the economic goal of the US of pushing income per capita to levels the world has never seen before for any large nation.

I was clued into India being headed for beating out China in overall population by Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. It is a fat enough book that I am only partway through. And I am glad I am reading it on a Kindle.